Yesterday I posted about a problem I was having streaming the ABC Australia live news feed. It has previously worked for me, though it sometimes freezes. Yesterday morning it wouldn't work for me at all. The entire day it didn't work. I finally asked if anyone else was having the same issue. I received a reply that was not the case. So I started digging.
I have different computers. My streaming computer, running Windows 8.1, did not work with the stream. My laptop, running Win 10, behaved identically. Another desktop, running XP, also refused to work with the stream. Finally, I checked a fourth computer running Windows 7. I got the same result. Then I noticed something about a plugin I had previously installed. This is called Flashcontrol and it prevents Flash videos (mostly ads) from playing automatically. I have had it on all my computers for some time and it has always worked perfectly. When a Flash video window is loaded, a Flashcontrol icon appears in the window. The window has to be clicked before the video will play. This is a very useful plugin and I have never had problems with it.
What I noticed was that the Flashcontrol icon was not appearing on the ABC news stream window. This made me think that Flashcontrol might be causing my problem. I disabled it and the news stream started playing normally. I concluded that Flashcontrol was the culprit and posted that I had found the answer.
This morning I discovered that I was wrong. When I tried disabling Flashcontrol on the other computers, the stream still wouldn't work. I checked everything. The stream still works normally on the Win 7 computer, but it doesn't work at all on any other computer. When I click on it the loading symbol animates but nothing further happens. I briefly disabled the firewall on two computers but that didn't make any difference. I tried the al jazeera live stream (also Flash) as a test and it worked fine. I upgraded the browser and flash but that also didn't make any difference. Finally, I downloaded the latest version of Chrome (not my regular browser) as a test and tried that. No difference.
So here is where I am: The ABC live news stream works normally on one computer running Win 7 but it doesn't work on any other computer, including one that is plugged into the same LAN switch as the Win 7 machine. The other computers do not have any blocking software installed that is not also on the Win 7 machine (only Ghostery) and no unusual plugins or extensions. Taking the firewall out of the equation doesn't make any difference. Different OS versions don't make a difference, except Win 7 works for some unfathomable reason. Browser and Flash updates don't make a difference. I hadn't changed anything when the problem started. The day before yesterday the stream worked normally. Yesterday it didn't. Nothing at my end changed during that time. Other videos on the ABC site stream normally. Only the live stream has this issue. I use Unotelly, separately installed on each machine.
Since the Win 7 computer works correctly, this has to be a simple issue but I absolutely cannot find it. I am extremely frustrated by my helplessness and the fact that this kind of thing seems to keep happening. I don't know what to try next. I think something external must have changed, in the stream feed itself, or Flash, or the browser but only my laptop is set to update automatically. Unless something is going on behind my back, nothing in the software should have changed.
That is my story. Someone, please help.
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